Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光) has clinched as much as 150 billion yuan (US$22 billion) of financing from two Chinese government-backed investors, amassing a pool of funds to pursue acquisitions and build a world-class semiconductor industry.
The state-linked chipmaker is to receive 100 billion yuan from China Development Bank (國家開發銀行), a policy lender overseen by the Cabinet, in the years until 2020.
It is to get another 50 billion yuan from a national chip fund set up in 2014 to drive advances in domestic semiconductors, Unigroup said in a statement on its Web site.
The company did not describe how the capital would be deployed, but Unigroup has been an aggressive acquirer and capacity-builder, the standard-bearer for an effort to wean China off its reliance on foreign technology.
It is building a US$30 billion memorychip production complex in Nanjing that is to become China’s largest when completed. It is also preparing to expand its memory and storage facilities in Wuhan.
The capital injection “is poised to lend strong support to Unigroup’s rapid expansion in the industry” and “speed the process of technology upgrades and lift our core competitiveness,” the company said in a statement after signing the agreements with the two investors.
China is spending an estimated US$150 billion over 10 years to try to achieve a leading position in semiconductor design and manufacturing, an ambitious plan that US executives and officials have warned could harm US interests.
Unigroup, an affiliate of the business arm of Tsinghua University, has become the largest semiconductor player in a nation dependent on imports for components such as high-performance processors and 3D-NAND chips.
Unigroup and other Tsinghua affiliates have pulled off a number of acquisitions, including of RDA Microelectronics Inc (銳迪科) and Spreadtrum Communications Inc (展訊通信), to beef up their design capability.
They have also signed partnership deals with global players including Western Digital Corp.
However, the merger and acquisition spree has hit a wall of late — Tsinghua was forced to withdraw a planned investment in Western Digital after the deal threatened to invite US government scrutiny, while a Taiwanese acquisition also fell through.
The company’s major business units and affiliates include IC developer Unigroup Guoxin Co (紫光國芯), formed via a series of mergers of state-backed entities, and Changjiang Storage (長江儲存), which was the result of a merger between Unigroup’s own memorychip operations and a government-run factory last year.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS